Nihon Falcom is one of the oldest RPG developers in the business, and basically created the action RPG genre. They are most well-known in the west as the developers behind the Ys series of games, though they have made a number of other games in their lifetime.

GAMES

The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky

The legend of heroes: Trails in the Sky is a trilogy of turn-based RPGs and one of the newest entries into Falcom's long-running Legend of Heroes series. The first game was released on PC in 2004 and later ported to the PSP, which is the version the rest of the world got. Xseed is bringing the first chapter to Steam, and is working with Carpe Fulgur to translate the second chapter and release it on steam.

Also wanna give mad props to Xseed's Sarah Leen, who ripped the game's code out and rewrote major sections of it just to get it to work properly on modern systems, not to mention adding widescreen support and other goodies. You can read about it over here.

Ys is a series of games about a dude named Adol and a dude named Dogi going on amazing wall-crushing/monster-slaying adventures. There's not much more to it than that. Released for the NEC PC-8801 in 1987, Ys: Ancient Ys Vanished was one of the very first action rpgs of its kind. Originally intended as one game, it was split in two due to budget and time restrictions. The second game is a direct continuation of the first with improvements made to gameplay and cutscenes. These have both been rendered obsolete with the release (and continual re-release) of Ys I&II, a bundle of the first two games with improved graphics and re-orchestrated music.

The Ys series is known for its fast-paced combat, reallyamazingmusic, somewhat generic stories, and developers who actually care about their fans. It's been going on for over 25 years now, and is still going strong. Sadly, the vast majority of the games were not available in english, or were given really lovely porting jobs/were put on the PSP for the longest time. This has changed recently, however, thanks to the efforts of Xseed Games.

Important characters:

Adol Christin
The-whoops, hang on.

Adol Christin
The protagonist of the Ys series, Adol is a red-haired adventurer looking for adventures to venture. Thankfully, he tends to find himself in scenarios where an adventurer is desperately needed. There isn't much else to his character, which makes him the best RPG protagonist ever.

Dogi
Dogi is a character from the first Ys game known for his wall-crushing ability. He became Adol's traveling companion following the first game, and has become a series mainstay. His backstory is touched upon in Ys III/Oath, but for the most part his character can be summed up with this:

The Games:

Ys I&II
The real deal. The first two Ys games are some of the earliest examples of action rpgs, and they show it. They are set apart by their unique combat system, which involves running into enemies repeatedly until they die. It sounds simple and easy, but its actually quite fun once you get into it. Available on Steam, PSP, PS2, DS, NES, Sega Saturn, the PC-Engine, and your toaster by this point.

Ys III: Wanderers From Ys
The black sheep of the Ys family, Ys III tried a number of different things with the gameplay. None of these worked. Instead of being overhead like the first two games, it was a sidescroller. Instead of running into enemies, you pressed a button to swing your sword. It had a good soundtrack, and not much else. Falcom later remade it in the form of Ys: The Oath in Felghana, so there's not much reason to play it these days.

Ys IV: Mask of the Sun is the first of the two Ys IV games, neither of which were made by Falcom. Mask of the Sun was developed by some company called Advance Communication for the SNES, and it returned the series to its monster-bumping roots. It had a number of problems relating to the interface and the pace of the combat, and is generally regarded as the lesser of the two Ys IV games. Before the release of Ys: Celceta, however, it was considered the "canon" game.

Ys IV: Dawn of Ys is the second Ys IV game not made by Falcom. This one was developed by Hudson Soft for the TurboGrafx-16, and popular opinion suggests that it is far superior to Mask of the Sun. This was considered by many to be the official version of Ys IV, until Falcom decided they wanted a piece of the pie and made Ys: Celceta for the PS Vita.

Ys V - Kefin, Lost City of Sand
Ys V was a departure from the series in many ways. It abandoned the traditional bump combat system in favor of a system where you could manually jump, hold your shield up, and swing your sword. Unlike Ys III, however, Ys V was played from an overhead perspective. The game is relatively unknown compared to other Ys games, and only received a fan translation in 2013. You can find said translation here.

The series took a bit of a hiatus after Ys V, until Falcom revived it in 2005 with:

Ys VI: The Ark of Napishtim
Ys VI properly modernized the series with fully-3d backgrounds, an animated intro sequence, and a new gameplay engine that ditched the bumping and grinding of old with sword-swinging, magic-using, platforming action. Sadly, the PS2 port done by Konami absolutely butchered the game. Horrible voice-acting, horrible 3d character models, and horrible 3d cutscenes that could only have been created by the animator having several successive strokes.

Ys: The Oath in Felghana
Following the revival of the series with Ys VI, Falcom decided to go back and remake Ys III, fixing all the mistakes they made with the original release. This remake was known as Ys: The Oath in Felghana, and it fixed basically everything from the old game. The gameplay was better, the story was more fleshed out, the music was better, the English voice acting was significantly better, and it was just an all-around amazing remake.

Ys Origin
Falcom followed up on Ys: Oath with Ys: Origin, a prequel set 700 years before the events of Ys 1&2. The game differs from conventional Ys games in a number of ways. The entire game takes place in one giant tower, has different campaigns where you play as different characters, and each character plays a different way. It has a lot of references to Ys 1&2, but don't feel like you need to have played that to play this.

Ys Seven
Ys Seven introduced a number of gameplay features that I'd probably know about if I'd played the game. It does allow you to play as multiple characters, which is cool, but I can't imagine it's that fun to play a fast-paced action game on the PSP. Here's hoping for a proper PC release.

Ys: Memories of Celceta
A PSP vita remake of Ys IV, Celceta does for Ys IV what Oath did for Ys III, except for the part where Ys IV wasn't poo poo. Apparently it's good, go play it if you have a Vita.

Ys vs Sora no Kiseki: Alternative Saga is basically the Dissidia of Falcom games, released in 2011 for the PSP (in Japan only). It uses a modified Ys Seven engine for battles of up to 4 characters and has all the familiar characters and special moves and ~crossover plot~ and amazing music you would expect. Being an Ys game the gameplay is a lot of fun and the Trails in the Sky characters are adapted well to the engine. It was somewhat of a love letter to hardcore fans as it has almost 200 tracks of Falcom music ranging from the very first version of Ys I to the latest JDK Band remixes to completely original tracks.

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The Ys Typing Tutor game (referred to by Falcom as "Typing of Ys") is a normally hidden mini-game included with the full Zwei!! PC game that can be unlocked provided certain conditions are met. It is based mostly around Ys II Complete (not Ys II Eternal), both in sprites and text related material.

Around May 8, 2005, some Ys fans were inquiring about the existence of this mini-game. That gave me the idea of perhaps trying to separate it out of Zwei!! and make it available for everyone since I had known about it after trying to hack Zwei!! itself long before. After about 7 hours of hacking and investigating such a task, I made a working separate copy by creating a launcher, extracting/obtaining all needed support files as well as making a few minor changes to the actual game executable component (DLL). I had given the text files over to Deuce for translation, and the hope was for quick release right after he finished. Well, he didn't, we both moved on to other things and the project sat idle.

Come August 14, 2006, I had a day or two to burn on the PC so I started doing my usual rounds of messageboard visiting among other things. While doing so, I happened to notice that old "Typing of Ys" thread that started this whole thing. A board member named Wrydwad had asked about the project status. Well, before I even responded, that got me thinking... I always lamented that Deuce and I never completed this project. So, I decided right then and there to just at least package the whole game in a nice installer, release it, and then maybe, just maybe, some other Ys fan might be willing to translate it. I knew Wrydwad mentioned he has Japanese knowledge and wanted to use it for fan translation purposes, so I mentioned in passing for him to take a crack at it if he wanted, no commitment required. Sure enough, he was that excited about it that he translated most of the strings fairly well, not Deuce-quality, but good enough, so I then edited all his work and released the fully English version now available for your downloading pleasure. Having everything translated also motivated me to finish the necessary font hacking that was needed to make it a fully English application despite expressing a desire to just quit given time constraints since I have more important things to do with my time right now.

So that's the quick history in a nutshell. Well, enjoy!

It's what it sounds like, a typing tutor following the events of the Ys games and filled with little in-jokes.

Other Falcom Stuff:

Gurumin: A Monstrous Adventure
Gurumin is a cute little action RPG that was released on PC, and later ported to PSP. The PSP version was released in the US by Mastiff, and they're currently trying to get the PC version on Steam through Greenlight.

Xanadu Next is a dungeon crawler Falcom made back in 2005, which has little connection to the video game series it is named after. It's kinda like a Diablo clone, except not terrible and with some of Falcom's better gameplay tropes included. A translation patch was just finished by these guys here, and if you can't access that it's also available here.

Zwei II
Zwei II (or 2 II in German) is the sequel to a PS2 RPG known as Zwei. It's cute, colorful, and according to Toddy it's the best game Falcom has ever made. Sadly, it was never released outside of Japan. A translation patch has been in the works over here for awhile, although it's been quite for awhile. Rumor has it that they sold the translation to Xseed.

Brandish: The Dark Revenant
Brandish: The Dark Revenant is a PSP remake of the SNES dungeon-crawler Brandish. TDR fixes most of the problems the original game had, and added a mode where you can play as the game's main female antagonist. Xseed has said they plan to release the game in the US at some point.

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It wasn't so obscure back in the day, because during the late 80s and early 90s, Falcom made a pretty big push into the Western market. We got a bunch of the YS I&II and III ports (we even got a version of Ys I made pretty much exclusively for us in the IBM-PC MS-DOS port, but it was very bad). They made a few mistakes, however.

1) They didn't open their own subsidiary. Falcom is actually one of Japan's most venerable game development companies; they opened for business in 1981 to sell Apple II hardware and software in Japan, and published their first proper game in 1982. They also arguably invented the JRPG with Dragon Slayer... in 1984, for the NEC PC-8801. Unlike Square or Enix or Konami, though (and fun fact: one of Square's early, pre-Final Fantasy big breaks was producing the MSX port of Dragon Slayer!) they never bothered to establish their own subsidiary overseas... because their first primary platform, the PC-88 and 98, wasn't at all a success in America. So they instead marched through a legion of publication partners for all their games, from Brøderbund to American Sammy to Working Designs to Sierra Entertainment (no, seriously) to NEC themselves. Of course, this was all after an epic falling out with Richard Garriott and Origin Studios... but that's practically a post in and of itself.

Point is, there was never any set guideline for consistency or quality between all these partners since Falcom didn't have anyone on this side of the pond, so the ports and translations, as noted, were literally all over the loving place. A lot of times the Falcom name even got sawed off the games so people didn't realize whose game it actually was.

2) Falcom backed the wrong horse. Falcom's biggest pushes in the 80s and 90s were for NEC's platforms: the PC-88 and PC-98 for PCs, and the PC-Engine, AKA TurboGrafx16, for consoles. In Japan this move made a ton of sense - both platforms were white-hot, the PC-X8 platform was THE IBM-PC equivalent of Japan, and the PC-Engine was in some ways making both the Genny and even the SNES look like chumps due to the CD attachment.

The problem is that neither of these platforms succeeded in the West at all. The PCX8 gained no traction whatsoever against the IBM-PC since it had nothing unique to offer to the American or European markets, and the TG16 came out later than the PC Engine did and so didn't have nearly as much to offer against the Gen and SNES. This required either messy porting of Falcom's titles, or simply releasing games to a semi-dead system, which is what they tried to do with the original Legend of Heroes game.

3) Falcom chose the wrong game to headline their initial push. Falcom, by the early 90s, had a fairly impressive catalogue of games. A lot of Dragon Slayer games, a couple Ys games, several other projects (including the nascent Legend of Heroes franchise). Out of these, Falcom had to choose a game to "headline" their push, to really show off what they could do.

The game they chose to promote above all others was Ys III: Wanderers From Ys.

If jttoddy does an LP of that game after this, you will understand - in painful detail - why this was the worst decision Falcom could have ever made.

So. After Ys III and the original LoH crashed and burned, Falcom basically took their ball and went home, ignoring the Western market entirely for a decade (meaning we missed out on a whole mess of games). Only in 2003 did we finally get a slightly janky version of Ys VI, and then Namco managed to make a complete disaster out of the Gagharv Trilogy of LoH games (III - V). In the interregnum, practically everyone overseas forgot Falcom even existed - they had zero presence outside of Japan between 1992 and 2003. It's only been recently that Falcom's made a new major push into the West in partnership with XSEED, who are treating the games with a good deal more respect.

Unfortunately, the releases so far are for a system that is doing gangbusters in Japan and is all but dead overseas. So we'll have to see what becomes of all this.

When you first start off, talk to everyone in town, then go and talk to Slaff. He'll give you a Short Sword. Make sure to Equip it.

On the field, and in towns, you recover health by standing still. This doesn't work in dungeons, but we'll work around that later.

Save early, save often. New enemies will routinely kick your rear end when you encounter them.

When you arrive in Minea you'll have to buy a shield and armour to progress. You start off with almost enough money, so buy the armor, equip it, then go out and grind to level 2. Then go buy the shield and continue.

After reaching Zepik and being told to go to the shrine, grind up on the undead knights outside until your hit level 4. This will take less time than you think. In doing so, you'll get to about 4000 gold. Go back to Minea and buy the second sword and armor.

There's a Silver Shield in the shrine, be sure to get it.

In the abandoned mine is a Heal Ring. This allows you to stand still and heal while in dungeons. If you equip it on the field, you heal twice as fast! Note that this won't work during boss battles, so switch to the Power Ring or Shield Ring for those.

There's also a Silver Armour in the mines.

Once you enter Darm Tower, you can't go back out, so be sure to wrap everything up before you go in.

That should help out those new to Ys I. It is an old game, so it's a little archaic, but still a whole lot of fun.
Also switch to the PC-8801 music for maximum awesome.

Ys V
I dunno poo poo about this game, except that there's a translation project underway.

The series took a bit of a hiatus after Ys V, until Falcom revived it in 2005 with:

Ys VI: The Ark of Napishtim
Ys VI properly modernized the series with fully-3d backgrounds, an animated intro sequence, and a new gameplay engine that ditched the bumping and grinding of old with sword-swinging, magic-using, platforming action. Sadly, the PS2 port done by Konami absolutely butchered the game. Horrible voice-acting, horrible 3d character models, and horrible 3d cutscenes that could only have been created by the animator having several successive strokes.

YsV is kind of weird. It doesn't feel anything like an Ys game, it actually feels a lot like Quintet RPG. That's not a bad thing mind you, just different. Hope they do eventually crank out a translation patch for it, but the way the ROM is setup is apparently a giant clusterfuck.

Oh, and there was a remake of Ys5 as well, it played kind of like a prototype of Ys6. Really ugly and clunky.

And since you didn't mention it, in the US PS2 version of Ys6, you can set it back to using the Japanese voice overs and cutscenes. Personally though, I just recommend picking up the PC version instead.

Gwyrgyn Blood fucked around with this message at Feb 16, 2013 around 04:21

The first Ys game I played was III on the SNES in the 90's, and you know what? I still like that game. Oh it's definitely the worst of the translated games, but I just got such a kick out of that soundtrack and I guess the combat was good enough for me at the time. I don't think I played any of the other games until a previous megathread here, actually.

My favorite is of course Oath, my beloved Ys III back and better than ever. It beat me to a bloody pulp and I loved it for it. I'm pretty happy with the other games. Ys I & II are classics and I am pretty over the Chronicles+ release. The only high profile release I haven't gotten around to is Origins, which has been on my backlog for a while.

Everything I've read on Ys V makes it sound pretty mediocre, though. I wonder there'd be enough demand to get a re-imagination of that too.

I hadn't actually played a Ys game growing up until I picked up Ys: Origins on Steam some time ago. I had an absolute load of fun with it, and still break it out to play every once in a while. It was a bit buggy, though. I never got to finish it with the secret characters, it always crashed out before the last boss fight began. I should load it up now and see if they've fixed that, actually.

I've only ever played Origin and a bit of Oath. I didn't like what I played of Oath that much really. Adol is just a lot less fun to play as than Yunica and the third character (especially the third character.) Maybe I was just missing something.

Basically what I'm saying is that Falcom should make more games like Origin, I feel like that gameplay style in particular is better suited to that kind of game.

I picked up Ys Origin and Oath at the Steam Winter sale because I have a thing for older obscure JRPGs. I am now addicted. I hadn't even finished my first playthrough of Origin before I wound up preordering Ys 1+2. Once I'm done with Origin I'm gonna play them in order up to Oath. And there's no way in hell I'm not going to preorder any others that get localized for PC. YS 6 has a PC port that hasn't come our way yet? Make it happen XSEED.

I've only ever played Origin and a bit of Oath. I didn't like what I played of Oath that much really. Adol is just a lot less fun to play as than Yunica and the third character (especially the third character.) Maybe I was just missing something.

Basically what I'm saying is that Falcom should make more games like Origin, I feel like that gameplay style in particular is better suited to that kind of game.

Adol plays almost exactly like Yunika except he has a faster/longer chain of normal attacks, and the balance of his magic spells are different (Yunika's Fire magic is much better than his, but Adol's Thunder and Wind are much stronger than hers). Oh, and he doesn't have Burst, which is good because Burst is a horribly implemented mechanic.

I have no idea how you could like Origin and not like Oath since they play almost identically except Oath is a lot more fleshed out. And you don't have to play as Hugo, which is a gigantic bonus. And you don't have to beat the game 3 times before you get to actually fight the final boss.

Though a good question is, how FAR did you play in Oath? Because the first major boss is really awful so if you quit at that point I wouldn't blame you.

Gwyrgyn Blood fucked around with this message at Feb 16, 2013 around 04:50

Not sure how others feel about it, but after mucking around with Chronicles+ for a while I definitely feel like Complete is the way to go both in character art and in the window size. I don't like how the Chronicles/PSP version zooms in so close; it makes Adol's sprite too big and gives you slightly less of a reaction time. The PSP art also doesn't seem to scale properly at higher resolutions (lots of jagged edges). But that's why the option is there for you to pick which version you want.

Chronicles+ also doesn't have the Turbo CD music, but since it's just .ogg files in a directory it's not hard to "update" it either to utilize them. Hooray~

Just finished my Hugo run in Origins. I'd say I had more fun playing as Yunica but the game was also a great deal easier with Hugo. About to start my third run now.

I'm another who's completely new to the series having picked up both Oath and Origin in the Steam sale (and then promptly pre-ordered Chronicles. I think playing through Oath first was a good idea since its' difficulty is way ramped up compared to Origin. Adol is cool and all but I think I enjoyed the fact that the characters in Origin talked and interacted.

Ys III actually got two different remakes. A not so great 2D one from Taito, and the Ys Oath in Felghana game for PS2/PC which we thankfully got the PSP port of.

Ys IV, man. Ys IV: Mask of the Sun, and Ys IV: Dawn of Ys are two totally different games, roughly the same situation but different story, graphics, music, everything. Like Ys V it got a low budget PS2/PC remake that's kind of junky.

I actually like Ys V quite a bit, though as others have said it's much more like Brain Lord or Terranigma than any Ys game. The charm is totally gone. There's basically no platforming in the game though, which is weird since it's the first Ys game where you can jump! Ys 6 more than made up for that though. The game difficulty is actually really, really low, so you may want to try the re-release, Ys 5 Expert.

Definitely get the US PS2 version of Ys 6 if you want to play it. The PSP port was Falcom's first PSP game and it has horrible load times. The CG cutscenes are abhorrent but there are cheat codes that let you use all the Japanese stuff instead anyway. The only thing that didn't make it over is the enemies exploding into bloody gibs. It also has a significant amount of extra content and music that's not in the Japanese versions.

Ys III is pretty cool because each version of it is broken yet amazing in some way. The SNES version has stupidly high difficulty but lets you attack very rapidly by just holding down the button. The Genesis version looks the worst but has (somehow) better music than the SNES one and the best balanced difficulty/experience gains of any version, and the Turbo CD one has literally the best music of the entire franchise and more story.

When you first start off, talk to everyone in town, then go and talk to Slaff. He'll give you a Short Sword. Make sure to Equip it.

On the field, and in towns, you recover health by standing still. This doesn't work in dungeons, but we'll work around that later.

Save early, save often. New enemies will routinely kick your rear end when you encounter them.

When you arrive in Minea you'll have to buy a shield and armour to progress. You start off with almost enough money, so buy the armor, equip it, then go out and grind to level 2. Then go buy the shield and continue.

After reaching Zepik and being told to go to the shrine, grind up on the undead knights outside until your hit level 4. This will take less time than you think. In doing so, you'll get to about 4000 gold. Go back to Minea and buy the second sword and armor.

There's a Silver Shield in the shrine, be sure to get it.

In the abandoned mine is a Heal Ring. This allows you to stand still and heal while in dungeons. If you equip it on the field, you heal twice as fast! Note that this won't work during boss battles, so switch to the Power Ring or Shield Ring for those.

There's also a Silver Armour in the mines.

Once you enter Darm Tower, you can't go back out, so be sure to wrap everything up before you go in.

That should help out those new to Ys I. It is an old game, so it's a little archaic, but still a whole lot of fun.
Also switch to the PC-8801 music for maximum awesome.

Definitely get the US PS2 version of Ys 6 if you want to play it. The PSP port was Falcom's first PSP game and it has horrible load times. The CG cutscenes are abhorrent but there are cheat codes that let you use all the Japanese stuff instead anyway. The only thing that didn't make it over is the enemies exploding into bloody gibs. It also has a significant amount of extra content and music that's not in the Japanese versions.

You also get the 3D models for everything, and I believe your equipment changes actually show up on your character all the time (as opposed to the PC version, where you can only see your equipment if you are wearing a complete set).

The extra content (the new dungeons) are alright but I wouldn't call them essential or anything. I'd still take the PC version over the PS2 myself, but both are good.

Ys6 is one of my favorites despite how rough it is. There's a heap ton of lore and story related bits in the game too, it's got connections to almost every other game in the series.

I HATE ALL FORMS OF FUN AND ENTERTAINMENT. I HATE BEAUTY. I AM GOLDJAS.

Ys 7 is a really drat good game except for the beginning half hour to hour where you have to just talk to people in town to trigger events because that's apparently how they decided to start off an action RPG made after 2010. Yeah I don't know either. Rest of the game was a loving blast though.

Edit: I'm a pretty huge Ys fan, played everything except for the games that have no english translation (5 and the Vita remake of 4, which I will probably buy a Vita just to play when it comes stateside.)

Ys6 is one of my favorites despite how rough it is. There's a heap ton of lore and story related bits in the game too, it's got connections to almost every other game in the series.

It was about seven years between V and VI so they did a good job of re-introducing the world while still telling a new story. I thought they did a great job of that. I like how every individual person you can talk to has a unique name and voice too. The English voice acting isn't even bad either, there were only two or three characters that stood out. Like one of Terra's pirate crew? That guy that sounds like the old man of the sea but the portrait is of some teenaged kid.

The highlight of Ys 7 for me was seeing a suspicious rock wall and, with no prompting from the game, being able to switch to Dogi and break it to find treasure. It's great when games just work the way they should.

I enjoyed 7, but the perfect guard mechanic was really easy and made a lot of boss attacks trivial to avoid just by spamming the shoulder buttons.

So I finished playing as Yunica on easy, and am now running through as Hugo on normal. I'm finding it a little surprising how "chunky" the game is, in that normal is a fair bit more challenging than easy (in that there is an actual risk of dieing to non boss enemies) and that grinding another level or getting weapon upgrades makes bosses much more manageable.

Also, is Hugo's Fire Wheel actually good for anything other than lighting torches? It seems fairly weak compared to his mines or his regular shots.

I've only ever played Origin and a bit of Oath. I didn't like what I played of Oath that much really. Adol is just a lot less fun to play as than Yunica and the third character (especially the third character.) Maybe I was just missing something.

Basically what I'm saying is that Falcom should make more games like Origin, I feel like that gameplay style in particular is better suited to that kind of game.

I don't think you were missing anything, I think it's just that Origin is a better game than Oath in pretty much every way. I played Origin before Oath and Oath felt like a clunky, miserable slog too. Origin on the other hand is not only a good Ys game but seems like a better Castlevania game than the last several Castlevania games have.

When you arrive in Minea you'll have to buy a shield and armour to progress. You start off with almost enough money, so buy the armor, equip it, then go out and grind to level 2. Then go buy the shield and continue.

Don't listen to these lies, everyone knows you buy the Ring first and give it to the guy in the pub who lost it, so you start out with 1500 gold instead of 1000.

Don't listen to these lies, everyone knows you buy the Ring first and give it to the guy in the pub who lost it, so you start out with 1500 gold instead of 1000.

There's also the fact that if you try to buy something from Pim but then pick no, like 10 times in a row, the buy prices from him all go down. Then if you try to sell something to him and do that, all the sell prices from him go up! It's not a huge difference, but still!

So I finished playing as Yunica on easy, and am now running through as Hugo on normal. I'm finding it a little surprising how "chunky" the game is, in that normal is a fair bit more challenging than easy (in that there is an actual risk of dieing to non boss enemies) and that grinding another level or getting weapon upgrades makes bosses much more manageable.

Also, is Hugo's Fire Wheel actually good for anything other than lighting torches? It seems fairly weak compared to his mines or his regular shots.

His charged fire skill shoots laser beams and is his most reliable source of damage. Mines are better on some enemies but charged fire shreds things up real good.

I played Oath and Origin over the last few months and had a great time with both. I was actually pretty impressed with how varied the characters in Origin were; I usually have a super-short attention span in seeing games through but I had fun playing the game as all three of them. Their differing abilities had me adopting completely different tactics for most of the tough enemies (even if, for Yunica, it usually devolved to "use the charged fire skill on absolutely everything"). I only wish that the levels weren't exactly the same across them.

His charged fire skill shoots laser beams and is his most reliable source of damage. Mines are better on some enemies but charged fire shreds things up real good.

I found the charged bombs to be really effective against everything that wasn't resistant to their damage. If you lay both of them and then hit the magic button again it instantly detonates the first one you laid (or maybe it's both of them? I can't remember).

Shear Modulus fucked around with this message at Feb 16, 2013 around 06:29

Don't listen to these lies, everyone knows you buy the Ring first and give it to the guy in the pub who lost it, so you start out with 1500 gold instead of 1000.

Or get the Golden Pot from the pond near the younger Roda Tree and sell it to Pim for 2000/2200 gold. But with how much levels increase your buffness in Ys I I always just grind that first level up. Gets it out of the way, y'know?

I got gifted Oath in Felghana by a goon, and I played it up until the volcano. Had a lot of fun with the wizard boss fight, and not so much with the hydra thing. But I quit in the volcano because I had no idea what to do. I quickly forgot about the game.

Months later I'm like "Huh maybe I should finish it". What followed were some of the more ballbusting, fistpumping, button mashy insane hours of fun I've had in years with a game. The boss fights are loving awesome, those harpies kept me on my toes at all times, the Valestein castle knight thing, all along with kickass tunes. Learning to use the invincibility frames with the yellow bracelet, and exploting boss patterns with it was so cool. It was so drat amazing and I can't wait for a sale on Origins so I can get that one too.

I enjoyed 7, but the perfect guard mechanic was really easy and made a lot of boss attacks trivial to avoid just by spamming the shoulder buttons.

I don't remember if they ever directly tell you about the mechanic in the game because I've spoken to people who have beaten the game and never knew that was a feature.

For people confused if you hold R and then L (or L then R? I forget) your lead goes into a brief sort of parry stance for a fraction of a second and if an enemy connects with a hit during the stance all damage is nullified and you get free SP. A lot of boss attacks can be completely nullified and even broken by spamming this after you can safely block the first hit - it's crazy fun to play around with.

I am incapable of beating Ys I Nightmare comfortably without the Complete soundtrack, so it must be better

Also Lance thanks for starting up a megathread for this. I tried starting one before Ys Origin came out with SpaceDrake but I got caught up doing other things. I got some stuff written up on Ys I and the series in general and I can help out with some information bits if you want, just shoot me a PM.

Also other games in the series you might want to look up for some funny stuff to add to the OP:
- Ys Strategy
- Ys Typing Tutor (which is available in English if you hate yourself)

And some of the spinoff titles that Falcom did that have some cool references to the Ys series:
- Gurumin: A Monstrous Adventure (available in English on PSP)
- Zwei!! I & II

I actually played through all of Seven without knowing about the Just Guard/Flash Step thing. If I remember right for some reason I hardly ever stocked up on restorative items either and just stubbornly forced my way through. God knows why.

So I cleared Ys I Chronicles+. Apparently I've played so many versions of Ys I (Master System, TurboCD, Saturn, Eternal Complete, DS in both Japanese and English, PSP and now Chronicles+) that I know the game like the back of my hand. It took me exactly 75 minutes.

Weirdly though, I've never cleared Ys II. I've gotten to Solomon (Salmon) Shrine, which I believe is near the end, but never actually finished it. I plan to rectify that.

Also Vantage Master had a handful of Ys characters and monsters in it.

I actually played through all of Seven without knowing about the Just Guard/Flash Step thing. If I remember right for some reason I hardly ever stocked up on restorative items either and just stubbornly forced my way through. God knows why.

I was playing on Normal though, so I doubt I'd get away with it on anything harder.

How is VI compared to Oath in terms of difficulty and stuff? I plan on picking it up as soon as it becomes avaliable on EU PSN or Steam. I found Oath pretty difficult at times (gently caress that clockwork cannon seriously) but Origin seemed a lot easier than it, even when playing as the third character who's apparantly supposed to be the hardest.

So I give this all about equal odds of either going super well or, uh, gettin' us all killed. Messily.

So a couple of prayers from you guys wouldn't hurt, yeah?

gently caress yes, an Ys thread. Like Toddy said, I'd kind of wanted one of these to go up when Origin came out, but I was up to my eyeballs in bullshit around that time and couldn't make do. Very happy to see this go up in time for Chronicles+. Good OP, Streetman.

Also just for the record, y'all should probably be falling to your knees and worshipping the ground Saraleen stands on, 'cause she's largely the reason Chronicles+ is so goddamn amazing. I'm actually curious as to whether or not the Japanese fans are gonna get pissed that there's no apparent plans for Chron+ to come out over in the "domestic" market, since it's pretty much the superior version of the game!

My only problem with Chronicles+, which will probably get fixed eventually, is that I can't get it to work with either my gamepads (the Saitek doesn't get recognized at all and while the dual shock works in the configuration it doesn't work in-game). For now I've jury rigged some third party software to map keyboard keys to the dual shock and it's working fine.

What is different about Chronicles + from Eternal Complete? I had a halfway-translated EC at some point like a decade or so ago, and from the Stema trailer this looks kind of like it except for the zoom-in mode (which I can't recall if it was in EC or not).

Is there ever going to be a translation of the PC version of Ys VI? I refuse to seek out any of the other versions.

Ys vs Sora no Kiseki: Alternative Saga is basically the Dissidia of Falcom games, released in 2011 for the PSP (in Japan only). It uses a modified Ys Seven engine for battles of up to 4 characters and has all the familiar characters and special moves and ~crossover plot~ and amazing music you would expect. Being an Ys game the gameplay is a lot of fun and the Trails in the Sky characters are adapted well to the engine. It was somewhat of a love letter to hardcore fans as it has almost 200 tracks of Falcom music ranging from the very first version of Ys I to the latest JDK Band remixes to completely original tracks.

I buy every XSEED released Falcom game I can. I own Oath in Felghana and Origins on Steam, but I wish they released physical copies of those. They probably can't afford to, so I understand.

I don't actually own Napishtim but I should get around to playing that. Also, after beating Trails it became my favorite RPG of all time, bar none. It was just so goddamned good I don't even understand why it blew out every single other turn-based RPG I've ever played. I could probably justify it though.

Now we play the waiting game for Second Chapter, which is being translated at a snail's pace as it's on XSEED's backburner according to their mods.

Oh yeah and I visited China recently and picked this up for 10 dollars:

It's Ys Seven PC for the Chinese. I got it for the novelty.

sandpiper fucked around with this message at Feb 16, 2013 around 14:42

What is different about Chronicles + from Eternal Complete? I had a halfway-translated EC at some point like a decade or so ago, and from the Stema trailer this looks kind of like it except for the zoom-in mode (which I can't recall if it was in EC or not).

Is there ever going to be a translation of the PC version of Ys VI? I refuse to seek out any of the other versions.

Saralene can probably articulate the differences better than I but the gist of it is that it is Ys I & II Complete, just with a couple of extra hooks. You can set the viewing window to be zoomed in like in the PSP/Chronicles version or use the set-up from Complete. You can also switch between three different sets of music (PC-88, Chronicles, Complete) and two different sets of artwork (Chronicles/Complete). And of course it's also been set-up so that it actually you know works on Windows 7. The only way I can get the original Complete games to run on W7 is to actually kill explorer.exe prior to running them; otherwise the colors get all messed up. There's also a widescreen option though it only really affects the Chronicles/PSP version and the cinematics.